Is modern Star Wars too self-referential?

Do you think that Disney's Star Wars films rely too much on referencing Star Wars itself?

Part of the charm of the original Star Wars trilogy was how George Lucas pulled from a wide range of sources from across the history of cinema when finding inspiration for his films. The original trilogy was a weird mish-mash of westerns, war films, high fantasy, sci-fi serials and Kurosawa films.

Fast forward to the present day and Star Wars seems to be mainly referencing itself. The production design draws heavily from Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for the original trilogy; there are direct references to the original trilogy in everything from plot, characters, shot compositions etc. The main conflict is even a direct copy-paste of the Empire/Rebellion conflict from A New Hope.

Would Disney's Star Wars do better to rediscover what made Star Wars great in the first place? Pulling together a load of seemingly disparate cinematic concepts in order to make something truly original.

Submitted March 22, 2018 at 05:33PM by discipleofdoom http://ift.tt/2FZ70Hm